Marvel's Captain America: 75 Heroic Years

Cap was chosen because of his heart.

For as long as I can remember,

I just wanted to do what was right.

He fights for the underdogs, people who are being bullied.

He had this charisma that immediately people latched onto.

He was an icon.

I wished to hell I'd have been Captain America.

It's just a guy with a shield.

That was something that was really compelling.

What's great about the Marvel heroes

is that they're interesting without their superpowers.

Nobody can touch the energy that's on Kirby pages.

That's the look he was going for.

The biggest impact comic-book hero of all time.

He represents the figure that we needed.

He was a great character... ultra-patriotic.

Gregg: The comic-book version of a founding father.

There's an action, there's an energy to it.

It was big. It was in your face.

That's what you wanted to see.

But there's more to the story than that.

Narrator: They say you should never judge a book by its cover,

for, many times, it is not the world's biggest,

strongest, and fastest on the outside

who have the largest hearts.

Such was the case

with an undersized kid from Brooklyn named Steve Rogers,

who would change the course of comic-book history

in the Marvel universe.

From his first appearance in 1941

to today's blockbuster films, this is

"Marvel's Captain America: 75 Heroic Years."

New York, 1940...

America's great melting pot,

where our country's finest thinkers, industrialists,

and artists converged to forge the true American dream.

Loeb: Jack Kirby and Joe Simon

very much spoke to the American dream.

Quesada: They were children of Jewish immigrants

that really sort of had to work their way up.

Kirby: My father grew up on the lower east side of Manhattan.

They were very poor.

They lived in just this little, typical tenement

all crowded into the one room.

They grew up on some of the rougher neighborhoods.

Kirby: There were gangs, kids duking out in the streets.

It was very rough.

Loeb: Two young, not terribly large guys.

They certainly weren't the kind of image of their heroes.

Most times, a fictional character is based

purely on the experiences of that particular author.

Thomas: Jack wasn't a big guy.

Brevoort: He was feisty. He was a fighter.

In that time, you had to be.

Mike: Joe lived in a neighborhood

where there was ethnic strife.

He got bullied a lot.

Kirby had a dislike for bullies in any form.

Kirby: Regardless of whether the fact he was gonna get beat up or not,

he would always step in to help.

You just don't know when to give up, do ya?

I can do this all day.

That played a big part in the creation of Captain America...

Somebody who would take on the bullies.

I don't like bullies.

I don't care where they're from.

Simon: Joe wanted to go to college, and he couldn't get in.

They would only take a certain amount of Jews.

Buckley: A lot of the writers and artists that worked in comics

couldn't get a legitimate job in the "Mad Men" advertising world.

These incredibly talented people denied fair opportunity,

and they created

some of the greatest American products.

Kirby: They met at Fox Publishing.

Joe got a job at Timely,

which is what Marvel was at the time.

Cassaday: Timely Comics was founded in 1939.

Martin Goodman was the publisher.

Joe was the editor, and Jack was the de facto art director.

They were brilliant.

I mean, Joe and Jack wrote and drew.

They worked as a team.

Kirby: They were different personalities...

my father, the, you know, the little, scrappy guy.

Lee: Joe was more the guy

who concentrated on the business end of it.

Jack was always hunched over the drawing boards,

working like a demon... two, three pages a day.

The minute Joe Simon saw Jack Kirby's artwork,

he knew this was something spectacular.

Mike: How kinetic it was, how it moved across the page.

He saw it as the work of a master.

Kirby: They were very good friends, besides being partners.

Simon: Jack said, "we're gonna move across the street,"

and Joe said, "great."

I thought the Kirbys were our cousins.

Lee: At that time, the big problem

was Adolf Hitler and the Nazis in Germany.

I guess that where anybody is from

affects the way he writes or draws.

Simon and Kirby, as Jews,

they definitely knew what side of the war they were on.

Quesada: They were very much aware of what was happening

to not just Jews but to everyone.

Kirby: Martin Goodman wanted some kind of hero comic.

Joe had this idea for a character

called "The Super American."

They were giving the public

something to sort of feed their interest in this situation.

The times called for a patriotic hero.

This was their way of taking on the Nazi empire.

Creating this character who would take on Hitler.

Saffel: They worked on, "What's the antithesis?"

The whole idea of America and what it stood for...

Thwart evil, fight bullies, defend the downtrodden.

The underdog winning out over the aggressor.

Quesada: The quintessential ideology of the American dream.

There were so many characters

with the word "Super" in their title.

He said, "Captain. Captain America."

Man: Captain America was born.

Evans: Captain America was born

out of kind of the experiences of the world.

Everyone was going through a war.

Martin Goodman was afraid

that somebody would shoot Hitler before the comic came out.

They had to turn this thing out quick.

Brevoort: Joe and Jack apparently put in a real string of all-nighters.

On the cover of "Captain America n°1,"

there is a guy who is wearing the American flag...

Brevoort: Bursting into some Nazi bunker

and smashing Hitler with a right cross.

It came out, and it was a huge sensation.

Saffel: That first issue sold a million copies.

It was so popular.

Quesada: That cover, while incredibly popular,

was also very, very controversial.

We weren't in World War II at that point.

A political statement on the cover of a comic book.

Brevoort: You don't really stop and think

about how provocative an image that that was.

This was a guy who was the head of state of an entire nation

and a nation that was going to war

with all the people around him.

Quesada: Jack and Joe received a lot of hate mail

because there were people that felt

that Captain America wasn't standing for their ideals.

The American Nazi party

was very strong in New York City.

They got a lot of death threats.

Quesada: There were people actually protesting

outside the offices of Timely at that time.

Sinister-looking characters hanging around.

Laguardia actually placed some protection

on the Timely Comics offices.

Narrator: In a country divided,

Cap's place in culture was in question,

but something was about to happen

that would unite the country completely.

Roosevelt: A date which will live in infamy.

Narrator: Ask any comic-book writer, and they'll tell you

that creating a superhero is no small task.

Creating a superhero that would change the world

is a nearly impossible one.

After the bombing of Pearl Harbor,

America entered World War II.

Captain America was seen as the great symbol

of our willingness to stand up in the face of tyranny.

Thomas: Suddenly, you had the perfect enemies.

It gave Captain America a whole reason for existence.

He was born out of united belief and united experience.

Brevoort: "Captain America" during the early war years

was selling in excess of a million copies an issue.

It struck a nerve at that particular moment.

Saffel: Joe and Jack worked on Cap for about a year,

but then they did sign up.

Joe was assigned to the public information office.

A lot of the comic-book people

got to serve in non-combat situations...

Slightly safer service than being on the front lines.

But Kirby didn't just serve.

He served as an actual grunt.

He went to whomever the head of his unit was

and said, you know, "I'm Jack Kirby,

and I draw Captain America."

The guy was like, "go out there to no man's land.

Every place you see a Nazi tank, draw an 'X.'"

Obviously, he was not too thrilled with that.

Saffel: Jack was in the wave

that came in the day after the first wave at D-Day.

Brevoort: He saw combat.

He saw things that would haunt him the rest of his life.

What he saw in Captain America

is what he saw in his fellow troops...

Guys just willing to die to help each other.

Quesada: Not anyone could have just become Captain America.

It was what was inside of Steve Rogers.

The fact that Steve Rogers had this morality and these ethics,

this huge heart and empathy,

was something that just got enhanced even more so